This year’s Regional Benchmarking Report by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission presents a mixture of good and bad news.
“The big picture is that Hampton Roads is stable and growing, but slowly, and in some cases we are falling behind similarly sized metro areas,” said Nikki Johnson, an economist with the commission.
Rent is one of those cases, which is growing in Hampton Roads twice as fast as the national average. The region’s rent growth is now the fourth highest among metros in the U.S., according to the 2026 report.
That hurts the local economy, Johnson said.
“When housing is unaffordable, it makes it harder to attract and retain workers, pushes residents toward maybe more affordable metro areas, and that can feed into our already slow population growth,” she said. “Also, money spent on rent is money not spent elsewhere in the economy.”
The root issue driving the rent growth is a lack of housing, which has gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
The region’s job growth in 2025 was positive but slowed due to federal spending cuts. Inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings were up but still trail national and state-level earnings.
“Shipbuilding and repair employment dipped slightly, but still remained near historic highs,” Johnson said.
The report notes one point of concern for Hampton Roads is population growth. Johnson said the area’s population growth has slowed as federal immigration policies have taken effect. And the region’s population is skewing older.
“The share of the population that's 65 and older is up from around 10% in 2000 to now 18% in 2025, and that group now exceeds the share of the population that's under 15,” she said. “That was very surprising to me.”
She said changes in population demographics is important to note when planning new housing projects.
“Do we still have the same need for the traditional two-story house, three-bedroom for a family of two or three kids?” she said. “”With our population aging, those dynamics do change a lot.”
